What is wrong with the universe? What is wrong with our planet? What is wrong with the human race? The biggest “wrong” with our population of over 7 billion people is SIN — a simple 3-letter word with “horrible, eternal” consequences.
What do you think most of the world even thinks about sin? Not much. How many “religions” on earth even talk about sin and what it truly means? Only one that I know about – obviously, Christianity.
As Christians, we know from God’s prophecy-filled, verifiable word-of-God Bible that Creator God is Holy, Perfect, Sinless and DEMANDS ALL of His created sentient beings – angels and humans – also be just as holy, perfect, and sinless as He is. That is His STANDARD. Anything less is sinful. The definition of sin is “missing the mark.” What mark? God’s mark of meeting His “standard.”
We know from the Bible that 1/3rd of God’s angels missed His mark and sinned when Lucifer and his buddies rejected what God had to offer and chose their own path by sinning, which is an eternal path now separated from God.
Human beings missed the mark from the get-go when the first human God made, Adam, disobeyed God’s warning not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; he sinned right alongside his soul mate Eve by eating from it.
Many people ask WHY. It seems so unfair and wrong for every human being that is born, starting from Adam and Eve, that they would be born spiritually dead due to their sin nature. How can our sin nature come from Adam alone?
We don’t have to wonder about this. God tells us exactly what happened in Gen 3:15. This is when Satan, the serpent, enticed Eve to eat the forbidden fruit in order to be like God and to know about good and evil. Eve took the first bite of the forbidden fruit, followed by Adam. And for the first time, they realized they were naked and hid from God when He came to them. God confronted them, and Eve blamed the serpent. Adam blamed Eve, and then God had a conversation with Satan, the serpent.
In Gen 3:15, the first and most important prophecy in the Bible, God tells Satan, “And I will put enmity between your seed and woman’s seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.”
To create a human being, you need two seeds – one from the man and one from the woman. God has just referred to the man’s seed as Satan’s seed due to Adam’s sin. God created Adam from the dust of the ground, and He created Eve from Adam. So Adam is the one actually “responsible” for the first sin.
Here is an interesting thought: Every sentient being God creates – angels and humans – He creates HIMSELF “directly,” and each one is holy, perfect, and sinless. This applies to each angel, to Adam, to Eve, and to Jesus Christ, as you will see in a moment.
Gen 3:15 is the “first” prophecy in the Bible, and it is the ANSWER to the sin problem that just occurred in the garden. The “He” who will crush Satan’s head (a mortal wound) is Jesus when He defeats death through His resurrection following His crucifixion. And the “you will strike His heel” is a non-mortal wound when Satan thinks he’s won over God when Jesus was crucified.
Obviously, God knew “in advance” that this would occur long before He even created the human race. How do we know that? Simple – God created humans to be able to procreate and produce their own children.
God made EACH angel. They don’t procreate. God made Adam and Eve “directly,” but because they sinned and man’s seed is now Satan’s seed, that means that God Himself will NOT “directly” create more human beings. He now “indirectly” creates them through human beings, but it takes sinful human beings to “directly” create more sinful human beings through procreation. This explains WHY all human beings are born with a sin nature. The ONLY exception is Jesus, who is a human being with a human mother. But as we know, God, the Holy Spirit, conceived Jesus in Mary’s body for one MAIN reason – Jesus HAD to be born WITHOUT a sin nature that only comes from man’s seed. It was God’s seed that DIRECTLY created Jesus since God Himself creates ONLY holy, perfect, and sinless beings.
All of the preceding has laid the groundwork to be able to understand why we are where we are on planet Earth. As Christians, we “know” sin is the problem. The world at large does “not” know that. Why is that? It is because they can ONLY see things from a “natural” human perspective due to our sin nature. Our sin nature is PRIDE, period. It is looking after ourselves FIRST, which is exactly what Lucifer did when he committed the first sin in the Bible by putting himself first before God when he, too, wanted to be worshipped.
So, what does this mean? Does our sin nature really lead to pride where we put ourselves first, or does it lead to love where we put others first? That’s a rhetorical question. Since God is invisible to us and we are not living in His presence where He takes care of EVERYTHING, we now have to provide for ourselves for everything. Since this applies to every human being, this means we are literally in competition with everyone to get what sinful people consider the BEST in living a great life on earth – more money, power, and sex, the gods of this sinful world.
And so, when humans do have a conscience (provided by God, by the way), they look at good and evil in terms of “works.” The saddest thing is that most sinful human beings do not even know they are sinful, and so it is only natural that if there is a God, the best way to please Him and get to heaven is by doing good deeds and serving others. It is love by putting others first. There have literally been hundreds of “religions” over the millennia, and they say you can only go to heaven by being more good than bad. Sort of a scale weighing out the good deeds over the bad deeds and making sure the good deeds are heavier.
This is non-believers’ “human thinking.” Sin never even enters the equation of being saved in order to go to heaven. We humans have to work for everything, and that includes our salvation, according to them.
The good news for those who “see” is that even though God is invisible to us, He has made Himself “visible” through all of Creation and also through His Holy Bible, the word of God. The Bible says in Romans that God has “instinctively” revealed Himself to “every human being” to know deep down that a Creator God created everything in the universe. And it should be obvious to “everyone” that all of creation had to have had a Supernatural DESIGNER vs creating itself perfectly by random chance.
This explains why the sinful human race from the very beginning has always known there has to be someone or something much greater than ourselves and thus ended up worshipping “things” they thought much greater like the sun, moon, or other types of idols. Our sinful nature will do its best to never worship the actual Creator but only some part of His Creation instead. Religions always make the fatal mistake of underestimating the holiness of God and overestimating the goodness of man. That would be like dropping a man in the middle of the ocean where he underestimates the size of the ocean and overestimates his swimming ability – a most fatal mistake, indeed.
All of this explains why the human race fails to understand the “importance” of sin. When unbelievers look at what the Bible calls sin, they always look at it from the perspective of “degrees” of sin. It’s easier to understand how a murderer ends up in hell vs a really good person who tells a little white lie every now and then.
Humans also do something that does not even apply to how God looks at things. Humans “compare.” We compare ourselves to others in terms of good and bad, among many other things. Mother Teresa is super good, and Hitler is super bad, for example. To them, she is obviously in heaven, and he is obviously, in hell. Really? Not necessarily. Since ALL human beings are born spiritually dead due to our sin nature, no amount of “good deeds” can get rid of the sins we commit during our lifetime.
ONLY God can deal with our sins, which He did through His Son dying on a cross to pay the price for our sins. And when we recognize who He is and what He’s done, we can “now” enter into a personal relationship with God and go from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. THAT is the ONLY way our sins are removed forever. As you can see, WORKS have ZERO effect on changing us from spiritually dead to spiritually alive – ZERO. It’s Christ and Christ ALONE who did it.
The best evangelical question you can ask someone is this: if you were to die tonight and stand before God, and God says to you, why should I let you into heaven, what would you say? Too many people will base their answer on works, saying, I tried to be the best person I could be. I never killed anyone or stole. I went to church, I gave to the poor, and I’m a nice person, so surely this will get me into heaven, won’t it, Lord? WRONG!!! That is a “works” answer. The ONLY right answer is, Lord, I by myself don’t deserve to come to heaven, but Your Son Jesus died on a cross to pay for my sins, and only through His sacrifice could I EVER enter heaven. RIGHT ANSWER!!! You might want to ask your friends and family this question and help them understand if they give a works-type answer.
God’s relationship to every person on the planet is ONE ON ONE. God NEVER looks at billions. He only sees one person at a time, and only God can actually have a personal, intimate relationship with someone through Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit as if that person was the ONLY person on the whole planet.
But sin HAS to be dealt with FIRST before any person can have a relationship with God. Jesus took care of that for believers at the cross. When God established the nation of Israel, the first thing He did was set up an animal sacrificial system to temporarily pay the price for their sins in order to have that relationship with Him. ONLY animal blood could be used for sacrifices because animal blood is “sinless” since they are not created in God’s image. Millions of animals with sinless blood were sacrificed over 2,000 years to maintain that relationship until God Himself came down and demonstrated the greatest act of love there is – to die in order to save another. Jesus as God died on a cross to save us by paying the price for our sins, and this ended the animal sacrificial system.
Jesus, as God, obviously had sinless blood, and He sacrificed His sinless blood out of LOVE, something animals cannot do.
Since the world is basically unconcerned with sins, they certainly have no clue how it’s possible to “remove all of our sins” in order to go from spiritually dead to spiritually alive. The saddest thing of all is that mistake is an ETERNAL mistake that leads to living in all eternity separated from the very best God offers those with Him to the very worst there is when you live forever outside God’s presence.
So, what’s the big deal with sin? It’s the biggest DEAL there is because it’s GOD’s ETERNAL DEAL. God has said, accept my Son, and He will save you from your sins forever. Reject My Son, and you will NOT be saved from your sins forever. That’s My DEAL with you.
For anyone who might read this article who is not a believer, let’s ALL pray they will repent and fall in love with our most INCREDIBLE Lord and Savior and join us in spending eternity WITH Him. DEAL?
Maranatha,
David Cogburn